Sydney's Dance
by Sarandipity
Summary: The arranged marriage of Sydney and Julian Romanov, the future heirs to the Russian throne and the future of the Russian Imperial Empire.


Title: Sydney's Dance  
Author: Sarandipity  
Summery: The arranged marriage for the gureentee of a pure heir to the Romanov throne, but as always, the couple is not complete.  
Relations: Duh, S/S.

A/N: You might have seen this on but now I am getting restless without it, and decided to continue my stories here. Also, forgive the grammer, it was checked before but the only correct version is on SD-1 and I sadly didn't save it on my computer, I'll edited later when I have the power to go back to recieve my files.

A/N2: This was all created by my exuberant mind. This story was all insipred by the movie Nicholas and Alexandra, The Lost Prince, all the pictures of the Romanovs and victorian clothing, and lastly all the useless romance novels I indulge in. I'm a seamstress, I create victorian gowns and corsets, and as I study the gowns created by Nadjezda Lamonosova to Tsarina Alix I like to dream about where that dress was worn to...so if there are paragraphs just describing the clothes and corsets (and forgive the corsets as well, I just had one Mary Jane thing in there) forgive that as well.

Enjoy!!!

In the moment of drowning in the events, he takes a glass of Georgian wine and drinks its entirety. It's a sweet taste that lingers in his mouth and he'll rather have the dry. He removes his eyes from the crimson red drops that still remain in his glass over to the other side of the garden. She sat, almost perfectly etched in his memory on the serine face she holds.

He admits to himself that he has never seen a beautiful face than the one across the garden. It only takes a second before he regrets the confession because he commences to think more of her.

He takes in sight on how well the white chiffon gown clings to her. It was not his imagination that ran off with him but the mere curiosity what the modest girl held excited him. He tilts his head as she locked within his gaze, her brown eyes showing no anxiety when he expected there would be. He speculates if there would be any concern later in their relationship and he questions what sort of relationship they would hold outside of union.

He lays the glass on the table and starts to gliding over to her side. She is sitting near the rose bush, the intensity of the red were the perfect background the light pigment of her skin and the vigorous nature of her brown hair that frames it. She doesn't want to seem in expectation of his coming, so she picks up the rose on the lower bush and took in the sent of its fragrance.

He sits down next to her, unable to leave her speechless like some. She acknowledged him but turning around with the rose in her hand and tilting her head to one side, if a question on why he came over to her.

"Do you enjoy the roses?" She uneasily smiles at him in politeness and turns her head back to the party that bores them both. She is not the lively girl that she desires to be, but instead enjoys the comfort of silence and the simplicity it accompanies. She then begins to pull on the fingers of her silk gloves and rest them in her lap. He observes her motions in the mere entertainment of the dull evening.

She takes of the kokoshnik made out of silver embroidery and fresh water pearls and lets it rest against the glittering contrast of the gown and her gloves. She itches softly at the hair that was swept up and in the process looses some locks from the bun. She raises her head and let her fingers rest above her collar bone, playing with the string of pearls that were clasped around her neck.

She has said no words the night they happened to meet for the first time, and it was becoming dreadfully annoying that they could not communicate. He has seen her companion maid earlier that day but he did not capture any words from her either. He decides that she might be mute just for the exuberance of it, but knows, in the complexity of this woman, that there is more that meets the eye.

"Do you enjoy the music as well?" He mentions the string quartet that plays in the ballroom inside. Inside the ballroom, the spectators only see a garden in the mist of the night while outside, the garden's citizens sees the movement of a waltz behind French doorways in the grander of a crystal chandelier.

She turns her head again and keeps her featuring smile and sighs. All the questions do nothing to reply some sort of comment. She doesn't turn her head when she sees in the clutter of his metals on his court uniform, a small orb of metal behind a gold medallion. She reaches out to touch it, as she finds a locket. He watches her curiously as she opens the clasp and views the photographs took almost forty years ago. He looks at her intense and interested eyes and back at what the locket holds.

"That's my mother." He tells her but assumes it does not register in her mind with no comment of a sigh of smile. "It was taken on her coronation day." He explains further but she is too interested in the locket to notice. "She's dead."

She raises her head and goes to her beaded clutch. He watches her closely at the narrow eyes and the lower red lips that she bites. She takes out a small wallet sized photographs and exchanges it with him. He takes it, hesitantly, and studies the aged picture. There were wrinkles and a yellow lining above the glossy card. He views a man, very tall and bold, but smiling down to, what had to have guess, to a three foot photographer. He assumed the three foot photographer was her.

"Is this your father?" He asks her. She says nothing, but only takes her hand and gives it a swift motion around her neck. He nods and sighs at her expression of a knife cutting the throat. "He's dead." He assumes. He gives the photograph back to the sullen girl who puts it back into her gray clutch. He shuts the locket and hides it under the metals that lay on his breast. He heaves a great sigh and repositions himself on the concrete bench that had patterns of Greek coliseum legs.

"I don't seem to know you name?" He questions her; he turns her head and knows that she did not understand. He sighs again and puts his hand up to his chest, recreating a jungle man. "My name is Julian. Your name is?" He pushes out his hand from his chest in a gesture of what Tarzan would have done.

She laughs at his tries failed for him to be understood.

"Alright. Me Julian…Ju-li-an." He pushes out his hands again and leaves his hand out in the air as if he was offering her a platter. She raises her eyebrow and puts her hand over her chest. "You?" He continues.

She opens her mouth and laughs as she wonders what he was implying. Under what she supposed he said, she lowered her head and cringes as she began to talk. "Sydney?" Her voice is soft and questionable in the intonation. He manages to smile not because of her name but that he voice is soothing a pleasant. Julian realizes that he knows the meaning of that name, it is from a French saint, he was very aware now of her language.

"You're from France!" He calls out in French. She begins to giggle as he continues to become proud that he managed to guess her language, when in reality, she spoke no French at all.

"Non?" He becomes disappointed when she her giggles become louder in opposite actions of answering back. "Sydney is French." He says in his native language and then becomes desperate to figure out her native language.

"You do speak. I know that, Sydney." Julian is too proud to laugh with her as she topples over in hilarity.

He turns away from her pounding hand as she tries desperately to take a breath. She calms herself eventually and turns back to face her, but much to his avail she keeps a mocking smile at his failure which he was too proud to joke about. When sits back up from her titled position, her kokoshnik falls to the ground along with her gloves. Julian reaches out for them like a proper gentleman, but her hand reaches out as well and brushes against the top of his hand. They didn't dare move after touching each other, the bottom of her soft palm stroking against his knuckles. Julian takes a sharp breath in as finally picks up the beaded crown and with his other hand picks up the silk gloves.

Sydney tries, gratefully, to take it from him.

"Here." Julian turns the crown right way in his hand, she smiles as he puts it on top of her head, fitting smugly around her hairstyle. She raises her hands and fixes the bow in the back and nods for his help. She slowly begins to put her gloves on and closed the pearl snaps at the bottom of the opera gloves. She stands up, bored obviously, and begins to walk down the garden path in between the head bushes. He watches her as the beading of her dress shimmered in the light of the moon.

Julian follows her out of pure curiosity and ends up walking on her left shoulder, keeping her company as an escort. Sydney smiles in delight that he has joined her on the midnight stroll.

"Do you know many people in Russia?" He tries again to speak with her. She does not smile or even acknowledge his Russian words, instead takes in the scenery with her eyes. "Sydney, is that English?" He struggles unsuccessfully for her to talk.

"Do you enjoy making me feel like a fool?" He whispers under his breath as Sydney begins to walk faster to the fountain in the middle of the garden. She takes her clutch from her hand and digs to find a kopeck. She finds two and gives one to Julian. He raises his eyebrow at the childish action she was implying. She takes the coin and throws it over her shoulder in a wish. He simply throws it in the fountain, not forcefully, but in the attempt not to seem foolish. Sydney understood this and cocked her head to the side as she watches him.

"The landscapers are probably going to clean them out." Julian assumes at the useless point of wishing with a penny. He finally realizes the woman next to him was truly at heart a child.

"What did you wish for?" Julian asks curiously. With her mouth opening, he would have guessed she was going to say something, but they were interrupted by General Prostov, head of palace affairs, catching up with his tarred lungs and bowing to both of them. He comes over to General Prostov, needing a word privately aside from Sydney.

"Your Highness?" Prostov questions as the walk behind a head bush.

"General, do you know anything about this girl?" Julian asks in curiosity.

"I looked over her wing during her move, Your Highness." He replies.

"So you know much?" Julian prods.

"She just turned fifteen, yesterday was her birthday. She celebrated it with her ladies in her court." Prostov recalls seeing a birthday cake and three of her maids singing joyously to the girl as she blew out her candles.

"Must have been hard for her, celebrating her birthday without family." Julian concludes.

"No, Your Highness, she seems relatively happy." He says on the contrary.

"Have you heard her speak at all?" Julian asks him.

"Well, no, Your Highness, she has representatives in her court that cares for her affairs. Speaks very good Russian. The other day, though, I saw her reading a book before, it wasn't in Cyrillic though." He tells him. "She seemed quite enthralled in it as well." He laughs and Julian nods again.

"What about her father?" He questions.

"I don't know much about him, Your Highness." Prostov replies.

"Do you know anything about her court? Her family as well?"

"Her history is not so much known. Your father requested her records to be handled by him himself. But I do know, from her maid, that she belongs to the House of Worth. Apparently after her mother's death the family was in financial struggle. She basically lived on hand outs from other realities and lived under her Aunt's jurisdiction until the arrangement." Prostov explains.

"That's why her family agreed? Because of economical needs?" Prostov nods.

"Thank you, General Prostov." Julian tries to dismiss him

"Your Highness, please, your father requests you and the girl's presence!" Julian nods again and successfully dismisses him. Sydney looks with great wonder of what he was requesting of them both. She doesn't wait very long in question when he offers her hand. With her clutch in one hand, she gives him her right arm and wraps it around his. They slowly walk through the head bushes and were received in ball room.

Sydney stomach drops as she follows Julian to where the Tsar sat at the head of the golden ballroom. No one in reality knew they were gone except his father, who always kept an eye on his son not out of concern but out of pure knowledge over him. He comes to him first, bow his head in his superiority, and sitting next to him as Sydney went off to see her maid.

"This girl doesn't speak a word of Russian." Julian complains in a discontented tone.

"She was born in America and raised by strangers in Eastern Europe, of course she doesn't speak a word of Russian." His father tells him.

"She's American?" Julian assumes.

"By chance, but by birthright she is English. Her Father was a minor Lord, whom grew up in American boarding schools. When he returned to England he met a Russian woman, a diplomat from our country. He father died first, but her mother disappeared shortly after."

"Prostov said she was dead." Julian interrupts.

"No, just missing. Left the child with her father's sister who lived in German when she was seven. Her father left a legacy, a small one, unfortunately. When the Aunt's gambling caught up with her there was no money for the welfare of the child,"

"So she marries her off at fifteen?" Julian interrupts again, with anger.

"Yes." His father takes offence but then dismisses his foolish son. "Your mother was the same age." He tells him.

"Sydney." Julian changes the subject. "She speaks English?" He raises his eyebrow.

"Fluently, along with German." He answers. Yes, the girl did know how to fool him.

Sydney comes back from behind, her maid standing at her shoulder as she sits down next to Julian. He gives a smile and then back to the crowd. When his father notices their presence together, he stands up, and allows the two to be seated for the announcement.

"It is has been finalized of my son, the future Tsar of Russia, to be married in two weeks to the young but lovely Lady Svetlana Anna-Jacquelina Derevko."

Julian snaps his head around at the name of Svetlana while there was a loud burst of clapping.

"Let God bring them happiness and an heir!"

There is another loud burst of clapping but settles after the quartet beings to play a waltz. It is known that the waltz is for them, so he asks for his hand. The only thing she did know is how to dance, so she accepts his hand and she glides onto the marble floor. She picks up her trail and puts her hand within his and he leads them, dancing around the ballroom.

Before they know in reality how fast life can really go, instead of Sydney twirling on the dance floor, she is twirling the golden ring around her finger and the diamond ring that was passed down to her.


End file.
